The Shadow - 173 - Death's Harlequin by Maxwell Grant

Author:Maxwell Grant [Grant, Maxwell]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Street & Smith
Published: 1939-04-30T22:00:00+00:00

When Blackie finally left the barroom, he felt the glow of liquor, but he wasn’t drunk. A cab was parked at the curb outside and he got in, gave the driver the address of the office building next door to the Women’s Athletic Club.

The hackman looked sleepy. but deep in his eyes was a murderous, avaricious look. His cab had made a quick run from the other side of town, after a hurry call from the barfly the bartender had signaled.

Blackie relaxed on the rear seat with closed eyes. Things were going well with him. He had earned one big split of dough and he was about to earn another. He didn’t know what was in the brown envelope he was taking to Mike Porter, and he didn’t care. Dough was all that interested Blackie.

When the taxi finally stopped, a gun appeared in the hackman’s right hand. Its muzzle pointed back toward the startled Blackie, who had come out of his doze. It continued to point as the driver slipped from behind the wheel and circled to the rear door of the cab.

He had picked a perfect spot for a hijack. It was a deserted, dead-end street. The high board fence of a lumber yard threw deep shadow on the sidewalk. A gate in the fence was ajar and the cabby— his name was Fred— indicated it with a quick gesture.

“Come outa the cab with your hands up! We got a date inside the lumber yard, pal!”

Blackie was no coward, but the gun made him cautious. He decided to play drunk. He stumbled out onto the running board, threw up a drunken arm to steady himself. But his wavering hand rested on the taxi’s open door for only the instant it took to close it into a hard fist.

He swung that fist with a short, choppy uppercut against the chin of the leering hackman. It lifted the gunman clear off his heels and drove him backward to the sidewalk.

Blackie’s own body pivoted with the blow. As he turned, he crouched with a quick tensing of his muscles. His own gun leaped into his hand from a concealed holster. He fired with almost a single gesture.

It was a hasty shot, one that was aimed too high. The slug whined above the head of the now-kneeling hackman and thudded through the fence of the deserted lumber yard. The next instant, Blackie uttered a shrill scream of agony. Unbearable pain ripped through his body.

A bullet from Fred’s gun had smashed his kneecap. Blackie went down like a felled tree, writhing and rolling on the sidewalk.

Fred darted forward, his gun ready for the finishing shot. He waited till his writhing victim rolled stomach upward, then he sent a slug tearing through the soft vitals of his screaming foe.

That second explosive roar ended Blackie’s shrieks. He died instantly.

THE hackman bent over Blackie and began a hasty search of his pockets. The first thing he found was the brown envelope which Blackie had stolen from the handbag of Evelyn Standish.

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